HELIAS

Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Calc2:

Calc2 > what is the cruelest thing you’ve ever seen one human do to another?

Helias > i was enrolled in a military academy for most of high school, and it would get pretty crazy. after my first year, i was placed in charge of about 20 cadets in my own platoon, and i was responsible for them shining their clothes and shoes and marching straight and cleaning their rooms, etc. this school was basically filled with addicts and gangbangers, so there was confrontation built into every aspect of life. when someone didn’t walk the way they were supposed to or talked back or didn’t shine their belt buckle enough, they’d get dealt with by a cadet goon squad made up of the oldest and meanest students that were sanctioned by the commandant and tac officers – the adult officers that are signed to each building to make sure it doesn’t turn into lord of the flies in there – and basically allowed to rule their respective companies with force.

> i had a kid named black in my platoon who never did shit. i mean nothing at all, this kid was terrible. he would always sham out when it was time to do work, never cleaned or did any of those other important things like shine his hat. because that’s important, that hat shining. so he was a fuck, but it didn’t matter too much. i was in charge and i was trying to not treat these scared kids the same way i was treated when i was them, alone in a new place where big scary motherfuckers hit you indiscriminately with mops. so we all covered for black, we did his work for him, shined his shit for him. but one day, the first sergeant and the xo made it down to our floor for inspection and saw his hellhole of a room. black made these guys furious. they saw his blatant disregard for the rules and just lost it. they called our entire platoon out in front of this kid’s room so they could witness what nonconformity would get them, and they beat this kid to within an inch of his life. they beat him with a dirt devil. and they made me watch. and i’m not saying they ‘made’ me watch, like you stay here and watch this please, no, this enormous dude got my ass in a headlock so i could recognize exactly how much i had let black down by not already beating him into understanding what the rules were. they were trying to get me to understand that this was my fault.

> the whole time they’re savagely beating this kid, he’s being a little punk ass, telling them off and escaping and hiding under his bed, they’d flip the bed and he’d use that chance to hide in the closet and tell them off some more, all bloody and fucked up and irreverent. it was working for him until the company commander arrived. this guy shut everything down, he ordered the entire company to form up in front of the building like we did every morning before class and then moved the party to the roof. it was a tall building, five stories. they took black up there, and me with him because i was responsible for his inability to bounce a quarter off of his bed.

> at this point i was genuinely scared for his life. if you could have seen him you’d have been too – he looked like a truck hit him. but he was still a little punk, not giving them the satisfaction of seeing him give in and give up the control they were trying to take from him. they took him to the roof, and in front of the whole company, about a hundred or hundred and fifty people, the two biggest guys each grabbed one of his legs and held him off of the edge of the roof. i hope i go through the rest of my life without ever hearing a sound like the one black made when he realized they were holding him off of the edge of a building and might actually drop him. he broke down, pissed all over himself, basically went into seizures, which was making it hard for these guys to hold him so they threw him on the roof, where he just curled up and didn’t move. he left about a week later. the bruises were too much for the administrative office to hide from his parents, who came and got him and then eventually pressed a lawsuit on the school that effectively shut it down as a ‘military’ academy. all of the the students involved were expelled, including me. but yeah, that was easily the worst.